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ClaireOSullivan-FirstPaper 4 - 02 Mar 2008 - Main.EbenMoglen
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> | | | | The Myth of Criminal Justice
-- By ClaireOSullivan - 10 Feb 2008 | | | It is far from clear that the criminal justice system serves its ostensible function of reducing crime and meting out “justice.” There are many reasons to doubt its effectiveness, and indeed to suspect that it may have the opposite effect: confessions are coerced; individuals are poorly represented; time spent in correctional facilities can induce less serious offenders to join criminal gangs for protection. The question then becomes: what is the actual purpose served by the criminal justice system in our society? There are many possible answers for this question, but in my opinion the most compelling is that the idea of criminal justice is part of the mythology of our society. The criminal justice system provides psychological satisfaction by perpetuating the myth of an effective, just legal system. That is, the criminal justice system purports to deter crime and punish criminals, which satisfies the need of the believers to feel protected and vindicated against criminals. | |
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- What this comes to is that the function of the system is to appear to be a just system. The tautology is apparent. A just system would also appear to be a just system, whereas a system that isn't just will only appear just to the degree that it remains unexamined. The purpose of the myth of criminal justice might be to make an unjust system resemble a just one, but that's a different claim.
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Mythology | | | Conclusion
It is difficult to see where the discrediting of the myth of effective criminal justice will take us. If Arnold is right, then it will probably be replaced by another, somewhat altered mythology. Even so, it is much more likely that those who are excluded from the community formed around this myth will be included if the myth is discredited, whether or not it is replaced. The process of breaking down the myth begins with asking questions like “does punishment deter” and “who does the system work for.” This constant questioning and the resulting destabilization will at least make room for the possibility of positive change. | |
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- The essay seems to me to have had more machinery, more ancestry, and more theory than it had effect. You did a good deal of winding up, using Arnold, Nancy, and much explanation of the common denominator of their two pop-sociological schemes, only to conclude by saying that if we now asked questions Holmes asked 110 years ago we would find interesting answers--a banal observation I made weeks ago in class. If the equipment was any good it should have brought you to a more innovative and valuable conclusion. You needed to construct a real outline, not a set of three headings, and to edit that outline, rigorously, so as to know what the argument's bearing was while it was under construction. Then you could have forced out the excess machinery, and driven more directly at whatever the idea really was underneath.
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